Letters to the Editor: 4-3-2014

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April 3, 2014 - 1:00am

LNG HAZARD

Exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) will lead to more drilling [see news story last week]. And more drilling means more fracking, more air and water pollution and more climate-fueled weather disasters like last year’s record fires, droughts and superstorms.

Converting our economy to a non-fossil-fueled base economy is immediate and absolutely essential if we want our children and future generations to have a healthy world. Harm is happening now.

Please contact the four commissioners of the Oregon DEQ at (503) 229-5301 or (800) 452-4011 and voice your concerns. The state of Oregon has final say in this matter.

Planet Glassberg, Eugene

CHANGE OUR CULTURE

April is National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month (SAAM). It is estimated that over half of women and almost one in five men in Oregon have experienced some form of sexual violence; however, sexual violence touches all of our lives. We all have a role in supporting survivors and changing our culture so that sexual violence is no longer allowed and excused.

We can all use our voices to raise public awareness about sexual violence and support survivors; to challenge unhealthy messages and stereotypes in our culture and the media that excuse violence; and to promote respectful relationships and healthy sexuality.

SAAM is the perfect time for each of us to think about how we can work toward this vision of a healthy future, and then take action to make it happen. One way to get involved and make a difference right here in our community is to volunteer with Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS). The next SASS volunteer training begins April 28. To learn more, visit sass-lane.org or email volunteer@sass-lane.org or call 484-9791.

It’s time … to talk about it!

Susan Lax, SASS board member, Eugene

MAMMOGRAMS AND MONEY

I feel compelled to make women aware of the fear-based money scam I believe imaging centers are perpetrating. I was convinced by my doctor, again, to have the once-a-year mammogram. My insurance covered it. I went in and had the compression of my breasts and received a call a week later. I needed to be retested for one of my breasts. They told me I would need to go to the Riverbend location in Springfield and I would be scheduled for an ultrasound three hours later.

I went in, no co-pay was taken and no one asked me how I was going to pay, nor whether my insurance was going to cover it. No other people lined up in their gowns to have this procedure and I thought that was odd. In the changing room I got into my gown, waited only about two or three minutes and was lead into the screening room. The clinician told me I had no cancer: “It is probably a fibroid.” The compression of that one breast was taken, and soon I was told I needed an ultrasound and was led across the hall. During the ultrasound the clinician said, "I don’t know why you are here. I see nothing!” I was told everything was fine and could get dressed and leave. A bill arrived a week or so later for over $300.

This, to me, is a scam. I am reading more and more about mammograms. I see they could be dangerous for all women. I felt, after observing all the employed people in this imaging center standing around, I could be paying for them and the unused equipment.

I have bought into the fear-based lines given to me by practitioners for over 20 years (I am 63). I see it is about the money.

Susan Klein, Eugene

A WOMAN’S DECISION

Forcing a victim of sexual assault to report said assault to the police, as now required by UO, is a very bad idea. Rape is already the most unreported crime in the world, and for good reason. Victims of sexual assault are often re-victimized by the system. Uneducated or uncaring police officers ask what the woman was wearing, if she had been drinking and so on.

Victims of sexual assault already blame themselves and have already gone through every “what if I had, or had not done this or that” in their own minds. Self-blame and self-recrimination are already a persistent and oppressive and degrading result of sexual assault, even though it does not matter if a victim was drinking, was wearing something revealing or even if she was at first attracted to the assailant. At any time a woman or girl says no, she has every right to not be sexually assaulted.

Rape is also the most difficult crime to prove, so a woman may go through years of trauma in a court case, only to be ripped to shreds and then to lose, and as a result, have her feelings of self-recrimination and self-hate embedded into her heart and mind forever.

I have only known one victim of sexual assault whose assailant was convicted, and he had not even succeeded in completing his assault. She chose to fight and managed to get some of his skin under her fingernails, and this was the only reason he was convicted.

Rape is a horrible crime that has lasting repercussions on a woman’s life that will often last her entire life. The wrong person carries the shame of rape, and society still does not help in this regard. She also lives with involuntary responses to not-so-out-of-the-ordinary experiences in her life, startle response, always sitting in the very back row of an event or class, in order to avoid the unknown behind her, inability to have a loving sexual relationship and a natural sexual response, persistent, invasive fear; the list goes on.

It is not society’s right to continue to take away her power regarding decisions about what is, or is not, the best way to proceed, or to not proceed, within the legal system. This will only lead to even less reporting than there already is.

Robin Mauro, Eugene

LOSING OUR DIGNITY

After watching the movie The Monuments Men, I was reminded of days long ago. I grew up being told stories of food and gas rationing, metal drives and personal sacrifice for America’s war efforts in World War II. Those were days when war profiteering was considered treasonous, and the tax rate was over 90 percent on America’s highest earners. And believe it or not, the wealthy not only got by but prospered, but not through the deaths of our soldiers or the devastation of our environment.

Today, I see an America filled with “throw-away” children, mentally ill citizens and veterans as some of our citizens reap ever-higher profits. We grouse that having a living wage for our workers will cost stockholders too much profit. We argue over bike lanes, public transport, spotted owls and gay marriage as our country’s long-held ideals of solidarity, compassion and personal dignity are lost.

Hal Huestis, Eugene

LEAKING LNG

The EW story last week “Wyden Supports Coos Bay LNG” fails to mention the main hazard. Natural gas is about 22 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Scientists say if we convert to natural gas in a big way, and if we lose more than 2 percent from pipes, tanks and such, it’ll soon produce the more potent greenhouse effect. The industry says they expect to lose about 3 percent.

Once it’s mined, the very best we can expect is that it all gets burned, producing the less dangerous CO2. Therefore, we need to stop it from being mined in the first place. It’s not just about Oregon, but about the continuation of civilization, and maybe all advanced consciousness on earth. That’s the closest my philosophy can come to the “death of God.”

Dan Robinson, Eugene

CONFRONTING CRUELTY

What an inspiring young woman to try to protect a lynx habitat and go to jail over it [see news story “Former Ecosaboteur Returns,” 3/20]. Those are the real heroes of our days who take action on behalf of those who have no voice in this country, because with extreme cruelty cases against animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms, we seem to live in Orwell’s 1984. Who else would perpetrate such deeds other than those permanently drugged and drunk to be able to stand their inhuman labor conditions and working hours for next to nothing, whereas the extreme rich keep cashing in unprotested?

It seems as if an tornado is hitting the public sphere with a tiny percentage of those on top and a mass of the suffering down below and nature and animals caught in between. If we don’t stand up to make a difference, nothing will ever get done for the greater good of all.

Who would like to have their children grow up in a place where such events as described below become a daily routine: “One time I took my knife — it’s sharp enough — and I sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece of bologna. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it just sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt in my hand — I was wearing a rubber glove — and I stuck the salt right up the hog’s ass. The poor hog didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.” (From a PETA investigation at a slaughterhouse, 2010.)

Lioba Multer, Ph.D., Yachats

THE MILITARY OPTION

In answer to letters concerning drafting the homeless: First, the homeless would be able to join the regular Army and be paid, if acceptable of course. The alternative would be to join, serving the community, like the old Works Progress Administration repairing our infrastructure for six years without pay. They would be receiving the possibility of learning a trade, food, room and good medical care, coming to approximately $18,725 per year, at a 40-hour week, $9 an hour. Also, after serving for either the four or six years, they would be eligible for four years of college, plus food, room and board and medical care, at a cost of approximately $33,725 per year, at 40 hours a week, $16 per hour. They would also, at the same time be able to work part time in society for pay.

The homeless who are restricted with physical or mental health issues or addiction would be treated by the military. Also, families would be provided for; the people who are able to work would have to in some form determined by our military. The assumption that our homeless are incapable of working or unpatriotic is also absurd.

As far as indentured servitude is concerned, our corporations in this country eliminating jobs and sending the work to Vietnam, paying $1.19 per day, is indentured servitude. Our country needs to stop policing the world for multinational corporations and bring part of the $900 billion back home to serve our and the military’s needs here at home, infrastructure and defense.

Gene Okins, Eugene

MAJORING IN BALLOLOGY

The Northwestern University football team is unionizing and the NCAA has decreed that universities have the right to bring in scabs in the event of a strike. Or, as I recommended before, they could make football a major and make the coaches professors. Think of the money to be saved if the professor of ballology was paid in line with their academic peers.

Vince Loving, Eugene

HISTORY OF BANKING

President Andrew Jackson was the only president in 1836 under which the U.S. was able to pay all the national debt. It did so because it cut borrowing from banks, money to be used for our commerce; instead it printed government-issued cash so that Americans would have money to do their transactions and controlled only the quantity in circulation.

The Constitution has a major flaw: It allows Congress to borrow money (at interest) but it doesn’t say that Congress can print fiat money with interests to no one. This is slavery.

Paper is cheap and the technology to make bills non-counterfeitable is easy enough.

King Edward of England did good with wooden “tally sticks” and his country prospered.

Back and forth went the battle between private banks, which wanted to practice usury with the whole world’s countries and loyal nationalists, which believed that their money should come interest free.

Because of Fractional Reserve Banking, banks can lend out and receive interest on more cash than they themselves possess.

Rome, too, was the greatest empire of its day by issuing (cheap) copper or brass fiat coins to its people. This prosperity lasted many centuries until Caesar decided to issue gold coins with his profile on them. This impoverished the people and caused wealth inequality with the goldsmiths and bankers winning. The Roman Empire went downhill after that.

Let’s stop feeding the 3,000 private banks called the Fed and their accomplice the IRS.